


Ground Zero

by abstract_type



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: EASY-TO-FOLLOW TENSE SHIFTS, F/F, Gen, Multi, Origins, Sei is twelve, Trip seven, Unreliable Narration, Virus thirteen, canon applies, foundation fic, genderbent, pre!femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abstract_type/pseuds/abstract_type
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every castle has its foundations. A glimpse at Sei, Virus, Trip, and theirs - and, by extension, the world’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ground Zero

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This fandom needs more genflip, methinks, and so here you go~

Ground Zero – Part One

 

Thursday, April 22nd of that year was only particularly interesting since it was the first day Sei had been allowed down to the other research facility. Toue even held her hand in the elevator. Then, she was twelve, and only next month would she be given the fedora which would later become a permanent staple of each outfit she wore.

She remembers now, lying in the dark, that she had worn thin boots that day: black boots that hadn’t quite protected her feet from the elevator’s frigid cold. She’d stretched out her hand, the other hand, and pressed a finger to the moving yellow light flashing in the gap between the elevator’s inner doors. As they moved even further underground, far below the bustling cityscape of Platinum Jail, Sei wondered if the hospital she sometimes woke up in was somewhere down here.

At that, she’d felt almost unbearably sick with fear.

The cold was unfamiliar, but fear – fear was as permanent as the distant wall bordering Midorijima Island, or at least the rest of it. The Old Residents’ District, where Aoba was. Where Aoba still is. Sei didn’t – doesn’t – know whether Aoba knows she exists. In her lowest moments, she believes Aoba does, and doesn’t care to come and see her. After all, Toue had promised to issue Aoba an invitation when the time came for her to request one.

Those were her very lowest moments. She holes herself up in her custom-made glass box, lies flat on her back and claws at her eyes for as long as she can withstand the pain; all to distract herself from her thoughts. Every night, Sei falls asleep with Toue’s monocle in her eyes and Aoba’s name on her lips.

At least, she thinks it’s night. Sometimes, she forgets whether it’s day when it’s dark outside, or the other way around, whether night…

Sei had been eleven, and she’d followed Toue down several white-washed corridors. She’d passed at least one hundred closed doors, wondered what they hid. Somewhere, someone screamed, some child, and the sound had sent shockwaves through her soul.

Back then, she’d been finding it progressively easier to control her face. Her eyes would stay as expressive as they needed to be, but her lips would remain in an ever-present state of tautness, her eyebrows carefully neutral. Expression was important. And until Toue manages to determine a way by which to copy Sei’s eyes, to replicate them along with the powers she wished she’d never possessed, expression will remain important.

There had been a door open; that’s right. The room inside was brighter than the corridor it bordered, and so light spilled over onto the floor, casting a white-gold flood several metres toward Toue and Sei.

“Do you know who these people are? Who you are about to meet?” Toue asked, releasing Sei’s hand to place his instead on her shoulder. She fought the reflex to shake it off or crouch away. She hated being touched.

“No,” said Sei, very softly.

“They are immune to your power.”

“Mm.”

Toue frowned, scrutinizing her for reaction. Then he’d drawn back, crossing to the door and pushing it all the way ajar, moving aside to let Sei through.

There was a doctor – another man, with short black hair and beady grey eyes – standing behind two children. Both were girls, both wore pigtails. The elder, the blonde, wore glasses. The younger had deep red hair that shone as it caught artificial light.

The eyes of both were a horrifying, startling blue. Synthetic, electric blue.

When the elder smiled, the other followed suit. Their smiles were as real as their eyes.

“Their names are Virus and Trip,” said the doctor, drawing out the syllables into long strings of cheese or toffee, “and both are perfectly immune to your… magic.”

Toue gave her a nudge between the shoulder blades that might have sent her stumbling once upon a time. As it was, she barely bit back a yelp of pain.

Sei bowed stiffly, only to an angle of forty-five degrees, before fixating her eyes, first upon Virus, then upon Trip, and lost herself in Trip’s wide, unflinching pupils, allowing their black to swallow, to consume her…

A flash of sharp, electric blue, sweet and dazzling, threw her from the darkness, sent her back a step; maybe she’d been a little surprised, for her powers were unique, special, and somehow they connected her and her Aoba, her absent twin sister.

Virus grinned more widely, a spark of something like amusement in those invincible eyes. “Try me,” she commanded.

And so, Sei had turned to her, resigned to failure, swallowed in her eyes, and was blocked once more and thrown like a buoy in a coastal thunderstorm.

“Good,” Toue had said. “Good.” Just good, and nothing more to excuse the inexplicable pain in Sei’s heart. “Sei, you’ve lacked company of your own age for the longest time. Allow yourselves to grow acquainted.”

With a brief flick of his fingers, Toue excused both himself and the doctor from the room, through another back door which, once closed, muted their footsteps, cut short their speech.

Virus yawned widely, kicking her bare legs. She had on a grey skirt – plain and muddy as dishwater – and white blouse, both spotless. Trip, though younger, always had blood on hers. (She still picks at her skin at night, scratches at it until her blood runs white. All while she sleeps. Sometimes, she wakes with an oddly feral look in her eyes, but Virus and Sei can to calm this other self of Trips, after years of bloody practice).

Virus stood, and Trip stood beside her. Trip had been shorter until Virus had turned sixteen; now, she towers over everyone, eyes half-lidded, lazy and dangerous.

“Sei,” said Virus. “We’ve heard of you.”

Sei nodded, tight-lipped.

“Do you speak, Sei?”

Another nod, and nearly drew back when Virus reached out to touch her bare shoulder. Virus’ fingers were cold. Her hands were smooth and dry.

Her fingernails were always cut to the quick.

“Well,” said Virus, “why don’t you say hello? Unless your voice matches your eyes?”

Sei swallowed, hands balled into fists at her sides. The leather of her gloves chafed at the backs of her hands.

“It doesn’t.”

“Oh?” Virus’ eyebrows rose, a smooth motion in a silent room. “Your voice is very nice, but not as nice as your eyes.”

She shifted uncomfortably. The floor was very flat. A curtain of short black hair concealed half her face when she shook her head. Sei felt herself blushing, and it terrified her. She hadn’t ever blushed before.

Virus’ hand retracted to fall at her own sides, dig itself into a pocket.

 

What had… What had happened then?

 

Trip darted forward, then. She grabbed Sei’s nose roughly between two fingers, and squeezed hard.

“Um!”

“Let go of her,” chastised Virus, slapping Trip upside the head. Trip’s grip loosened, but didn’t falter. She peered up at Sei, eyes half-lidded, teeth bared. Sei saw that her hair was choppily cut, a little like Sei’s own, and that parts of it had been torn out from the roots.

“You’re not special,” hissed Trip. She looked to Virus. “She’ s nothing.”

“That’s rude. Apologise.”

“Are you sisters?” Sei asked, through her plugged up nose.

“No,” said Virus, amused. “We aren’t. No one’s ever asked that before. Though, I suppose if Trip were to dye her hair, we would probably pass for sisters more often.”

“Where do you live?”

“Sorry?” said Sei. Her voice only quavered an inch.

Virus… Virus is dangerous. She’s cold, charming, deadly with a gun or knife. She isn’t anywhere close to the danger Trip presents. Trip is violent, unstable, and lacks common human restraint. Rather, restrained only by Virus’ constant and eternal presence – sometimes Sei will do – and the false little coating of polish she spreads across her ruined skin. Sei had known this from that moment, the moment Trip had grabbed at her nose and pinched tight.

“ _Where do you live?”_

“Upstairs,” whispered Sei, “In an apartment.”

Trip’s frown deepened. She looked to Virus, who nodded encouragingly, and then back to Sei, face sceptical. “Can we visit sometime?”

Sei shrugged. “If Toue allows it.”

“You’re a doll,” said Trip. Her eyes were cold as ice. Every few moments, Sei recalls, she would whet her lips in an odd sort of nervous twitch. She was jumpy, and flinched and startled at every sound.

“Relax, Trip. She’s fine, aren’t you, Sei?”

Virus’ words were a warning. Trip’s eyes were bestial, and Sei fought the urge to calm her by force – it wouldn’t work, and could enrage her to the point of total mental collapse.

She mustered up her courage, drawing warmth from her extremities to her frail heart. It beat and stuttered weakly, out of time. Sei had never been a healthy child. “I…” Her breath caught in her throat as Trip’s sharp ails snagged on her shirt. The hairband clasping one of Trip’s choppy pigtails slipped, and cropped hair blew fuzzy.

 

Pigtails? They’d both worn those, correct?

Correct?

“I’m not a doll. D-don’t call me that.”

Trip’s lip curled.

“Don’t… Don’t call me that!”

Virus froze. Her glasses slipped from her sweaty nose and clattered to the floor.

Trip’s grip stiffened. She bared her teeth. Then she bent her head into Sei’s shirt and took a long, slow sniff.

Sei stood as still as she possibly could, hardly daring to breathe. The wound on her back hadn’t yet healed, and with every centimetre closer Trip’s teeth came to her chest, the more the phantom pains would peak. She couldn’t allow herself to be overwhelmed by a seven year old. She couldn’t allow herself to be hurt in any way that would put her in bed for another week. Another week, staring at her ceiling. Conversing with the plaster.

Slowly, Trip bent down and retrieved Virus’ glasses from the floor.

“Thank you,” said Virus. Her tone was light, as pleasant as it always would be. She wouldn’t be injured if Trip ever lost control. One day, many years from their first meeting, that courtesy would extend also to Sei.

“Relax, Sei. You don’t mind if I call you by your given name?”

She’d left it a bit late in the day to ask. Somehow, Sei knew that Virus would continue to do so regardless of her answer. Not for the first time that day, she wondered what had gone on, down on this stark, freezing floor.

“No,” she said softly.

“Trip has violent tendencies,” Virus continued. She placed a gentle hand on Trip’s shoulder. “A month ago, she was getting herself into more fights than her body could handle, never mind the testing we’re forced to undergo. It seems as long as I stay near her, her aggression fades. I believe you’ve proven yourself to be too vulnerable to pose any sort of threat.”

Trip sniffed once and turned away, moving to sit on the metal bed as far from the other two as possible. Her back looked very small and frail.

“Have you always lived here?” Virus asked, seating herself a comfortable distance from Trip, facing Sei.

“Yes. Always. I’ve never been down here before, only upstairs, or…” Or in the hospital, for various reasons.

Virus adjusted her glasses, smoothing her hair. “Trip and I arrived at different times. I’ve been here nearly a year – one of the longest, I believe.”

“Were your eyes always blue?” Sei wondered if the question was too personal. She’s never been so sure of anything pertaining to common society. She’s a virgin, still, experientially: a social virgin. Back then, when he was very young, she’d journey with Toue to the top floor of Oval Tower, look down upon the lights and bright, cloistered crowds and wish she was down there with them, lost within them.

“Yes.” Virus sounds almost amused. “They were paler, though. The doctor says our eyes will fade to a lighter, less startling blue. You were born here?”

Sei tried not to be thrown by the other girl’s rapid train of thought and speech. She was too used to loneliness, and to silence. “I think so. I don’t know.”

“That’s fine. Neither Trip nor I have families.”

“Family? Family. Did you ever have one?” The word was sweet. She thought of Aoba.

“Once.” Virus shrugged, the disarming smile returning to her face. “Last year.” They don’t matter. The message was implicit. Underhand. The true depth of Virus’ words remains unstated, taking a trained ear to perceive it; Sei has always been perceptive.

“We were never close. My mother was often absent. My father had disappeared long before then.”

“I’m sorry,” Sei said, automatically. That was what you were meant to say in such situations. So said the internet.

“No need to apologise. You didn’t know. I wasn’t home a lot, either. There’ a new game, very recently released: Rhyme.” The pitch of her voice hitches, betraying Virus’ excitement.

Sei had heard of it. She passed her time with the interned, and had by then known of Rhyme, the up-and-coming virtual reality where mental battle occurred in real-time, sometimes inflicting real-world damage. Sei herself had played, and won. She had also told Toue, then still under some fragile delusion he would care. He had seemed vaguely interested, at least, and had promised to look into supporting Rhyme’s development from a mere microcosm into a game Sei could play whenever she was bored… which was often.

She’d gradually learned to play by herself. Now, she plays not only with computers, but inside them.

“I’ve played,” is all Sei said.

“Trip and I were scouted through Rhyme. We were both exceptional players. There are others here, as well: children, Rhyme players. I believe mental strength was an important indication to Toue that we would withstand his experimentation.” Virus waved a hand across her eyes, for emphasis.

“Have you played Trip?”

“I don’t believe so. Sei… You have lovely hair.”

Sei flushed and stammered, “Y-yours is nicer.”

Trip barked a laugh, drawing further into herself, curling her knees into her chest.

“Don’t be shy,” Virus chuckled, reaching out and beckoning to Sei with two fingers. Shakily, Sei stepped forward, far enough to allow Virus to reach out and catch a strand of hair between her fingers.

She was vulnerable, allowing free access to her too-sensitive hair. Every touch of Virus’ nails send a shiver of dull pain – dull enough to handle; dull enough that Sei knew she could come to ignore it – along her scalp and shooting down her spine.

“Interesting. Is your hair sensitive?”

“Um… It…”

“It is!” Virus crowed, weaving strands gently between her fingers. “Does it hurt?”

Sei nodded, shrinking into herself and bowing her head, watching Virus’ pigtails bobbing in excitement on her shoulders.

Trip’s gaze was penetrating, searing through her skull.


End file.
